25 Super Cool Paper Inspired Website Designs
One of my favourite ’styles’ in web design is one that takes inspiration from traditional media such as paper and cardboard. Using scans and images of paper provides an informal, cut-and-paste collage feeling to the design giving the site more of a personal and hand-crafted image - quite opposite to the clean and shiny trend of other web design styles. Here are 25 good examples of this super cool paper based effect put into practice.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
That looks pretty awsome
April 19th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
I love the site you did for revolution Chris! Pretty cool!
April 20th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Ive been seeing this style around a few places and I really like it. I just posted some free paper textures on my blog if anyone is making a site like this they might come in handy. http://www.digital-artist-toolbox.com
April 20th, 2008 at 4:46 am
Wow these are really great…I am totally in love with the Tennessee ones…they have those crazy background treatments I’m always on the lookout for these days. Strangely, they aren’t featured in the portfolio of the company that made them. I wanted to see exactly how many mini-sites they’d done for TN.
April 20th, 2008 at 5:01 am
Hmm. Why isn’t your site on the list?
April 20th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Thanks to all for the comments,
CarrotNetwork: I wondered if anyone would notice that I sneaked that one in haha! It’s actually a site I recently made for my partner’s driving school along with the printed work and car graphics.
DAT: Nice collection of textures you have there, definitely a good resource for created this type of style.
Brandi: I agree, the large background certainly makes for an eye catching design. Large background photographs is also another style that has been becoming more popular recently.
April 20th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Hi Chris! Yes, I am so taken with that background technique that I recently wrote a post about it here: http://pixelswithpigtails.com/noted/bold-sassy-website-backgrounds/
Of course about 2 days later the much more popular Noupe website did a huge version of the same idea:
http://www.noupe.com/design/63-impressive-website-background-images-trends-resources-and-tutorials.html
So it goes!
April 20th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Sweet list Chris. Another trend I definitely like. I particularly think the combination of paper/wood/large background on sites is always impressive. I’m currently making a studio site using those elements. Thanks for more inspiration!
April 20th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
You know, that Ebugogo.tv is DEFINITELY inspired by WebDesignerWall…a lot of elements are very similar looking.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:19 am
thank you.
April 21st, 2008 at 3:46 am
@Adrian: Was just thinking the same thing…
April 21st, 2008 at 3:53 am
Wow and I just noticed the background image on bandpush is the same from electricpulp. I spend too much time on the internet…
April 21st, 2008 at 10:10 am
Great list. Web Designer wall still blows me away when I first saw it. He also shares with some of the techniques to create his website. How I wish I had such good workdpress and css skills so that I can do something more for my blog.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:07 am
I dont mean to sound pretentious. But I think that my personal site would fit nicely in your collection. Let me know what you think http://www.travisneilson.com
btw: i found your site through good-tutorials.com, i was just browsing but i bookmarked this site. good job.
April 25th, 2008 at 4:32 am
These are fantastic! I’ve seen many such collections, but I love seeing the handmade style taking off and the direction that web design is going. I also really like the Free People Clothing site. I think they change it every quarter or so (or maybe every time a new catalog is released?). I’ve taken to grabbing screenshots because it seems like every time I go back, they have a new look!
I noticed quite a few churches on here, too. I think it’s great they are starting to take web design into consideration.
How do you find sites like this??
April 27th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Wonderful selection!
I think it’s nice to take a break sometimes from so much digital stuff. That’s what I tried when i designed my illustration web site, scanning materials such as Canson paper and working with Conte. Pretty much running away from the digital look.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:56 am
Very Inspiring web designs.They are certainly a welcome change from the usual web templates.
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Thanks for the recognition on the bandpush site…We really appreciate the love. keep it up.
May 4th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Amazing work!!
May 6th, 2008 at 11:23 am
all websites are really beautiful
May 7th, 2008 at 5:22 am
Here is a site I did that was book-inspired. There is really something to having a webpage behave like physical media.
http://www.lindstromliterary.com/
May 18th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Really really cool websites! I love the paper / cardboard design!
May 29th, 2008 at 9:00 am
While not technically paper inspired, the Trapper-Keeper motif on the blog over at x-entertainment.com is what initially inspired me to start learning CSS all those years ago…
June 11th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
http://www.gurselcoskun.com
June 11th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Beautiful
June 12th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
hepsi cok güzel(all of so well)
June 13th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
you forgot my site
http://nikibrown.com 
June 26th, 2008 at 7:32 am
i love this site.
June 30th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Love it. This type of design brings so much more warmth to a site.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Wonderful selection!
July 14th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
wow! i would like to add one .. check this out http://aisyahrozi.com
July 15th, 2008 at 9:36 am
These look really great, check http://www.developflash.com if you’d like to find out more about online design tools
July 21st, 2008 at 2:51 am
Digital Scrapbook Designer blogs have tons of examples of the paper style
http://www.ChristinaReneeDesigns.com
Check out the gallery here for many other examples:
http://www.MyScrapbookArt.com